Activision Publishing CEO not interested in “morphing games into movies”

Eric Hirshberg, the CEO of Activision Publishing, is a strong believer in games doing “what games do best” and doesn’t share the “strange desire to morph games into movies or have them behave more like movies”. He sat down with Edge for a chat about what the next generation of consoles means for Activision, check out some choice quotes after the break.

Asked by Edge whether we might see a romantic comedy from the next generation of Activision games, Hirshberg explained that while he wouldn’t rule out some kind of genre innovation, he believed in games focusing on “transportive” experiences.

“However, I think there’s something to do with allowing different media to do what each media does well. When I think of games as an art form, they start with being transportive. Because they’re interactive, because you are more involved in the experience than in any other form of entertainment, it all starts with being transported. And obviously a natural place to want to transport people is into an experience they can’t have in their everyday lives. Sometimes that’s driving a fast car, sometimes that’s being a professional athlete, sometimes that’s being a rock star, sometimes that’s being a hero or going into a fantastical future”

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He then spoke against the forced transposition of one experience into the other medium and urged developers to utilise the strengths of games as interactive experiences.

“I think this is inherently what games do best and so I’d expect that to be the basis of games for a long time to come. I don’t know if romantic comedy fits that model. I think that’s something that movies and TV do well. There’s this strange desire to morph games into movies or have them behave more like movies; I don’t share that desire. Games are wonderful as they are and do different things better than other forms of media.”

Speaking about Activision’s plans for the next generation of consoles, Hirshberg argued that the new consoles improved social and multidevice integration would lead to greater innovation in games, rather than simply increased horsepower.